


Meet Me At Waffle House

by MelissaBosquez



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Awesome Pepper Potts, F/M, First Meetings, Meet-Cute, Mild Sexual Content, Mostly Just Alluded To, One Night Stands, Pepper Potts Feels, Pepperony - Freeform, Playboy Tony Stark Years, Pre-Relationship, Technically a Meet Ugly, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:08:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26264728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelissaBosquez/pseuds/MelissaBosquez
Summary: Tony is used to sneaking out of women's beds before the sun even rises. This is however, the first time that he has snuck out of a hotel room at the same time as a beautiful woman in a neighboring room is making her own hasty retreat.ORWritten from a "Meet Ugly" Tumblr prompt, "We met each other on a Sunday morning, both doing our walk of shame."
Relationships: Pepper Potts & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Comments: 16
Kudos: 76





	Meet Me At Waffle House

**Author's Note:**

> This was just a fun little one shot that I've been working on the last couple of days and would not leave me alone. Hope you enjoy our beautiful disaster duo. Leave me a kudos or comment down below if you enjoy it! <3

Tony stared up at the cream colored ceiling of the hotel room, wide awake and waiting for his partner’s breath to finally even out into a rhythmic sleep so he could slip the hell out of here. It was normally his policy to never go to anyone’s hotel room so that he could always slip away to his workshop or make another clean exit from his partner, but he was in Denver for some boring tech conference that Obie said he had to attend on pain of death, and it had been easier to stumble a couple floors up from the conference than to drive across town to his cushier room with the leggy blonde beside him. Marilyn? Marsha? Something like that. 

The evening had been enjoyable enough after he gave his obligatory speech and was able to mingle with the crowd and have a drink or two or three. It didn’t take long to be surrounded by the usual hangerson and easy women vying for his money or just the opportunity to say that they’d had sex with a celebrity, and he inevitably paired off with Mallory. She had legs for miles and the perfect amount of cleavage to get lost in, so he had unfortunately missed one of her major character defects while he’d been staring, and that was that she hadn’t stopped talking since she sat down next to him at the bar. 

Now Tony was a talkative person. He considered himself an amateur wordsmith that was able to spin circles around the press and bullshit himself out of speeding tickets and boardroom troubles alike. He could spend hours discussing robotics and the intricacies in rebuilding a 1932 Roadster from the ground up. His motto had always been to either dazzle the general public with his brilliance or to baffle them with bullshit and very often the two were intertwined, but christ even he had to stop and take a breath every once in awhile, at the very least when he was having sex. Unless he was using his words for specific purposes; a husky line growled into a partner’s ear at the right time, words of encouragement for his lover, safewords when needed. 

But shit, Martha had essentially given him her whole damn life story in between girlish laughs as he teased her, cries of ecstasy as he got her off when he went down on her, even in whispered moans into his ear while he was inside her. She just was physically incapable of shutting up even after three rousing orgasms and a nightcap, still mumbling away into his chest with a satisfied grin as she curled up as she finally began to drift off. The diatribe was entirely unnecessary for someone that he had absolutely no plans to see again as long as he lived, no matter how nice the sex was. 

It had been almost twenty minutes ago that she finally drifted off, the bright red numbers of the clock beside the bed flashing 4:45am. He needed some coffee and food, he hadn’t eaten except for the odd appetizer floating around on trays at the conference and before then he couldn’t even remember. Just a few more minutes to make sure Mary was really asleep, nothing was more of a pain in the ass than being busted creeping out of the room, he’d had many projectiles thrown at his head for doing as much and he tried to avoid it whenever possible. 

So, he waited. Staring at the ugly cream ceiling, running a mental to do list through his head of all he needed to do when he was back in California, though he had half a mind to extend his stay a little bit and go skiing, drive Obie crazy when he skipped the investor’s meeting he had scheduled Monday morning. Then again Happy wasn’t the best at the sport and as funny as it would be to watch him fall on his ass all day, he’d rather go out with Rhodey for something like that and currently his best friend was in Germany so he’d have to take a rain check.

Glancing down at the mess of blonde hair tangled on his chest he decided that it had been long enough for REM sleep to kick in, so he went about the delicate nature of extricating himself from Melanie’s surprisingly tight grasp. 

Standing up and stretching he felt pleasantly achy like he always did after a good lay, only it was also kind of not so pleasant? And yeah, the other negative about Macy was that she was a biter. Far be it from him to ever kink shame anyone, he could definitely mingle with the strangest, but one examination in the bathroom mirror confirmed his entire neck had been marred with vampiric intensity and man was his makeup gal going to hate his guts. 

He took a quick piss, gathered his wrinkled clothing, sliding on his boxer briefs and pants and pulled the wrinkled button up over his shoulders but left it open, he could take the time to button it all up when he wasn’t making an escape. 

A quick check to his wallet confirmed all of his credit cards and cash were still in place (he'd learned the hard way to always check when he was 17 and Sunset something or other made off with all the money in his wallet and some Stark Industries specs he had lying about his room), and grabbed his shoes in hand, heading for the door.

Monica never even budged from her spot as the bright light from the hall spilled across the bed and slowly dispersed as Tony quietly closed the door behind him. 

Mission accomplished and not a single stiletto thrown at him.

He let out a deep sigh of relief and leaned back against the wall, gaining his bearings when his attention was drawn to a nearly identical sigh coming from outside the neighboring room to Mandy's. 

The other person seemed to have realized they were not alone either as blue eyes met brown and Tony felt himself being swept away by the stranger's beauty. 

"Oh. Hi," the woman said nervously, clutching her pumps to her rumpled blouse when she realized that she wasn’t alone in the hall.

Tony couldn't suppress the grin that came over his lips as he looked the stranger over. He wondered if she knew who he was. "Hi."

The awkward silence resumed as she seemed like she both wanted to run away in the opposite direction while also wanting to commiserate in the moment with him. 

“Rough night?” she finally offered.

“I've had rougher,” he grinned back, knowing that was not the question she was asking. His direct and unashamed approach was instantly rewarded by the pink blush that flushed across the red head’s face. 

“Oh. That's not what I meant,” she stammered.

“I know,” Tony said, his smile growing even wider and a chuckle escaping. 

“You just looked like you were making a hasty retreat, is all.” 

He raised his eyebrows taking in her own state of disheveledness, from the lack of footwear to the rumpled clothing and obvious bedhead. “I could say the same for you, too.” 

Her eyes widened as she let out a nervous laugh. “No, I'm fine I was just…” she trailed off struggling for words as she realized exactly the way the situation looked, even to a stranger. “Well you know I don't normally do this kind of thing.”

“Have anonymous sex with a stranger and runaway at mornings light?”

He was rewarded with another blush, her arms falling to her sides. “When you put it like that…”

Tony didn’t know what it was about this woman that he felt so immediately drawn to her. Maybe it was that they were both caught sneaking away from their late night rendezvous, or maybe that she seemed genuinely ashamed at being busted. She was absolutely adorable and he needed to find a way to get more time with her and he wasn’t sure that would happen if she knew exactly how regular an occurrence this was for him.

“Oh yeah, me either.”

Only every other night for at least the last ten years.

“Riiiight,” she drew out the word like she didn’t really believe him but also wasn’t going to call him out. “Well, I should go.”

“Me too. Running away usually requires getting farther away than the door, right?” 

The stranger bristled at that. “I'm not running away.” 

“Walking away from briskly?” 

“Look I know him, I have his number. So, it’s not running away. Just needed to clear my head away from him.”

“Of course. No need to justify your bad decisions with another stranger that has made more than enough of their own. But on that note, if you're interested in making one more, I am starving and would love to get to know you better.” 

She smiled softly. “You’re not really a stranger, Tony Stark.”

Tony cocked his head to the side with a smile and pointed a finger at her. “So, you did recognize me.”

“It’s kind of hard not to. You’re on just about every magazine cover there is every single week with some brand new scandal or other.”

“It’s weird now isn’t it? Knowing who I am, or that I know that you know who I am?” he asked, squinting his eyes at her, searching her features. More often than not his name was a selling point, helping him to acquire just about everything that he could want in life, but this woman didn’t seem like the type to fawn over title and status. It was him that was actually doing his best to pursue  _ her.  _

“Not weird, but I did mean what I said. I don’t normally do this,” she said turning around to look at the closed hotel room door. “So, if that’s the only reason you’re inviting me to eat…”

Well, it wasn’t the  _ only _ reason. Yes, she was gorgeous and even given the fact that he had just gotten laid an hour ago he would have loved to whisk this blue eyed stranger away to his own room, but there was something else that he just couldn’t put a finger on. He just knew that if he let her walk away that he would regret it.

“No. No. It wasn’t like that actually. You just looked like...you might need a friend.” It must have been the right thing to say because she wasn’t walking away yet. “So, you know my name, can we even the playing field here a little bit?”

“Pepper.”

“Pepper,” he said the name reverently. “Okay, Pepper let’s try this again. Hi, Pepper, I’m Tony. You wanna get some horribly unhealthy breakfast with me at the nearest greasy spoon? My treat.”

“Hm, I don’t know. Are you sure you can spare it?” she teased, a mischievous light dancing in her eyes. 

“Only if you promise to buy the next time.”

“You’re very sure of yourself.”

“One of my many endearing qualities,” he said, flashing a brilliant white smile.

“I’m not sure about that, but I guess there’s only one way to see for myself. Just so you know, I’m still a little tipsy and I’m going to order so many waffles.”

“Fine by me,” he said, holding an arm out to her. “I love a woman who can eat their weight in breakfast foods.”

Pepper rolled her eyes but he could see the hint of a smirk as she tentatively reached out for his arm and let him lead her away. 

They ended up at the Waffle House down the road off the corner of the highway, and true to her word Pepper ordered as many waffles as she could handle and then some, Tony helping her polish off the last order. They sat in the small, sticky booth talking about Pepper and the job she hated but had to keep to pay the bills, rambling on long passed after all the food was eaten and the waitress refilled their glasses a half a dozen times, just talking and enjoying one another's company before regrettably having to part ways.

By the time Pepper made it back to her job at Hammer Industries in New York, all of her notes on the technical conference, typed and organized, highlighting everything her inept boss would need to know, there was a job offer waiting on her desk from Stark Industries with a brief note...

_Talk salaries over breakfast? - TS_

Followed by his cell phone number and the address of the closest Waffle House.

**Author's Note:**

> This is so short and cheesy but I love these nerds so much. <3


End file.
